He Thought He Knew Her
by Krys33
Summary: “What he didn’t know was that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Turned out there was a lot about Zoë that he didn’t know, and maybe hadn’t even considered.” [WashZoë, preseries, oneshot]


**A/N: ** This was written for the ficathon at the zoe(underscore)wash community on livejournal. The prompt was a pre-/during series fic with cooking and laughter and no angst or violence. I'm still relatively new to the fandom, so reviews and concrit and such are very much appreciated!  
**Disclaimer: **Joss owns. Both Firefly and my soul

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He thought he knew her.

The day Hoban Washburne had been introduced to _Serenity_, he had met each of its three crew members. And his first impressions of them had been spot on.

Well, for the most part.

Bester had been easy to read: young, lacking in the smarts department, barely above-average knowledge of ships, mind always, _always_, on sex, and only on the boat for the coin and coin alone.

Mal was tougher. He seemed nice enough, but from what Wash could gather, there was a lot more to him than met the eye. He knew that the man didn't take kindly to the Alliance and had even gone so far as to voluntarily take up arms in the war. He knew Mal had a hell of a lot of stories behind that tell-nothing exterior of his.

And if the captain ever felt like telling those tales, he was fairly certain that he didn't want to be the one to hear them.

But his first impression of Zoë Alleyne couldn't have been more wrong.

On the day they'd met, her grip had been firm and her voice terse as she responded to his kind, trying-to-be-friendly questions with monosyllabic, only-what-you-need-to-know answers as she patted him down for a weapon. Her face was expressionless, eyes cold, and he had yet to learn that that was only because she could hide her emotions far better than Mal ever could.

He was fascinated, really, by the way her layers began to peel away as she began to let him in, little by little. He was also fascinated by the number of layers that there were, each a bit thinner than the last.

The first time she smiled, _actually_ smiled, was the moment he really fell for her.

He had been recounting a particularly humorous anecdote concerning shadow puppets, and as he watched, her lips had parted, revealing pearly white teeth, and the way her eyes brightened practically lit up the room.

But what came next was what made his breath hitch and put an unexpected pause in his storytelling:

She laughed. Zoë Alleyne, the stone-cold warrior woman who he hadn't seen crack so much as a smirk before this very moment,_ laughed_.

And if Wash ever said that the sound of her laughter wasn't the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard, well, he'd be lying through his teeth.

After that day, it became his goal to make her laugh more often. What he didn't know was that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Turned out there was a lot about Zoë that he didn't know, and maybe hadn't even considered.

He didn't know she could be just as funny as he was, if she was really trying. Sometimes it was hard for him to keep up with her witty comebacks and sardonic slights, and he found the look on her face when she won one of their verbal sparring matches so utterly endearing that every once in awhile he _let_ her win, just to see her smug smirk of victory.

He didn't know she could cook, and very well, at that. On a night of particularly rough flying, he barely noticed he hadn't eaten 'til well into the night when she brought up a plate of food. Zoë'd actually intended to save him leftovers from dinner, but Jayne foiled that plan, forcing her to cook up an entirely new meal. And even though she kept saying she'd stayed up late to do so only because she wasn't tired, the fact that she'd dozed off at the co-pilot console said a thing or two about her state of exhaustion.

He didn't know she was such a phenomenal kisser, either. It's not that he was expecting worse, it was that he didn't know what he was expecting at all when he pulled her to him in a quick, unexpected move and pressed his lips to hers. He only knew it was far, far better than anything he could've ever imagined.

He didn't know how soft her skin was, or how incredible her slender fingers would feel when they were running through his hair or down his back or even merely laced with his own.

He didn't know that sometimes she cried at night, when she thought he was sleeping. He didn't know that even after all these years had passed since the war, nightmares still lurked at the edge of her subconscious, coming out of the shadows only at night to plague her dreams. He didn't know that all she really needed in times like those were his arms holding her to him and his voice whispering soothing strings of words softly into her ear.

But when he finally discovered it all, when he finally made his way through all of her layers, he found that all the work and time and effort had been so incredibly worth it.

Because finally _knew_ her.

* * *

**End**


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